What to feed your sick child: Common sense

Friday

Nov 23, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 23, 2007 at 11:22 PM

Do you ever wonder what to feed your child when she’s sick?

Amy Neff Roth

Do you ever wonder what to feed your child when she’s sick?
What’s best for a cold, for nausea, for diarrhea, for a sore throat?
Well, quit wondering. It turns out that it doesn’t really matter, according to Dr. Philip Heavner, chief of pediatrics at Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown.
Even the infamous BRAT diet of bananas, rice, applesauce and toast for diarrhea doesn’t have any science behind it, he said.
And as for feeding a fever and starving a cold, that’s nothing more than an old wives’ tale that doctors dispensed with long ago.
“There are no disease-specific guidelines,” Heavner said. “It’s mostly common sense.”
Just don’t give your kids foods that make them feel worse, such as scratchy foods for a sore throat or food that could upset an already iffy stomach, such as acidic or spicy foods, he said.
But all in all, food isn’t the issue.
“No matter what a person has, I tell them eating is not important,” Heavner said. “It’s fluids. I don’t care if your child doesn’t eat for a week.”
So the question becomes what to give a sick child to drink. This is most important for infants.
“What we worry about in infants is water intoxication,” Heavner said.
If a baby is throwing up a lot, water and watery drinks aren’t the way to rehydrate the infant, he said. Several days of drinking just water risks altering the baby’s salt and water balance, which occasionally leads to seizures, he said.
Instead, give infants Pedialyte, an oral electrolyte maintenance solution for children’s diarrhea and vomiting. It’s the best drink readily available in this country, Heavner said.
Kids older than 1 aren’t at risk for water intoxication; Heavner suggested giving them sports drinks, which taste a lot better than salty Pedialyte.
If children aren’t eating anything at all, or at least not keeping it down, water alone won’t hydrate them because the body doesn’t absorb it unless it’s accompanied by sugar or salt, Heavner explained.
Beyond that, Heavner recommends drinking clear liquids, nothing milky or heavy, for nausea, and avoiding fruit juice when a child has diarrhea.
As for Coke or ginger ale settling an upset stomach, it’s possible they could buffer stomach acid in small amounts, but drinking more than that causes gas, and Heavner doesn’t recommend it.
“There’s no magic to it. There’s just dispelling a lot of myths,” Heavner said. “I think sometimes myths evolve because people want to do something.”

There is one famous home remedy that’s always safe to try – chicken noodle soup. It’s got lots of salt, some fat and some nutrition in it, making it a decent remedy for older kids, Heavner said.